Thursday, September 18, 2014

UUFO....

So last month I took a long weekend break from posting on Facebook. I still commented on other people's posts. I still read everything that hit my feed. But I stopped posting. It was a quick impromptu experiment. And the results were interesting and unexpected.

What started it was my passion for a plethora of postings. Basically I talk a lot. So I post a lot. And at times people feel the need to tell me to knock it off. Which amazes me. Normally my response is, unfollow, unfriend, fuck off, all viable choices. But after getting more than my normal amount over a few weeks I was in a bit of a mood. Then a friend of mine posted that someone she knew had sent her a PM letting her know that instead of posting the things she normally does, stories about her kids, her practice, her day to day life, she should really be posting about IMPORTANT issues. Umm..what? I'm sorry but her kids, her practice and her day to day life are the IMPORTANT issues. And who the fuck are you exactly?

So those things together flipped a switch in my head and I stopped posting. Didn't say anything about it. Just stopped. And waited to see what would happen. I wanted to see if the people that bitch about my profligate posting problem would send me a PM saying, "Hey, good job" or "Glad you took what I said to heart and STFU already!"

But nope.

Weekend came and went and then I got a "Hey, are you okay?" message. Quickly followed by another, "Is everything all right?" post. And I realized that there were people out there who only hear from me through my superfluous status summaries. And they were worried. So I fessed up to what I had done and why. And thought, here now, those people who think I post too much will understand that they didn't even notice when I was gone. So obviously I am not taking up too much of their brain space after all.

But what happened instead were a lot of people apologizing for not noticing. Which wasn't what I intended at all. I don't expect people to notice everything I do and say. I really don't. I know that with Facebook algorithms even the people that we do want to see everything they do it sometimes slips through the cracks. And I also know that I read a lot more than I comment on. So even if it looks like I haven't "seen" someone I have. So I wasn't looking for people to tell me why they hadn't noticed and that they would from here on out. I really wasn't. I just wanted to make the point that people feel the need to tell you when you are doing something they find annoying but then never notice when it's not happening anymore. And it can't have been all that annoying if you didn't even notice when it was gone right?

But my experiment didn't work that way. I ended up worrying people who love me and like seeing my absolute abundance of assertions. People who hadn't noticed I was missing felt guilty. There were people who wanted to let me know how much they enjoy my posts, that I make them laugh or think or both. And then I had a few people who made me laugh. My son, for instance, said he had noticed I wasn't posting and as I was at hockey camp all weekend he figured there should be posts. When he tried calling Sunday morning and I didn't answer (hockey camp) he went to a relative's page and looked for comments from me, knowing if I was around I would have posted there. When he saw that I had he just sat back and waited for the story. Another friend of mine figured out right away it was some sort of experiment. She knows me well enough to know that I am constantly trying out something and if I stopped posting with no word, though she could see Brent still was and that I was with him places he was checking in, then I was fine and just sciencing...(It's totally a word. I wrote it didn't I?)

But the biggest thing I learned was to go back to my stance of unfollow, unfriend, fuck off. It's my page. I am going to post a lot. I talk a lot. I have things to share. Some of it you might care about. Some of it you might not. Just like a conversation in real life. And just like in real life if you are having a conversation you don't want to have you can walk away...

If I am excessive and exuberant in my exhortations you have been warned. I don't see it changing. Well, that might not be true...hockey season starts tomorrow...